


9 A.M.

by Milieu



Category: Bandom, Black Veil Brides, Tokio Hotel
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Gen, Graduate School, No Plot/Plotless, Silly, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 15:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15415785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieu/pseuds/Milieu
Summary: A normal morning - or as normal as it can get for Ashley, anyway.





	9 A.M.

Ashley had not taken Andy seriously when he had announced just prior to starting grad school that he was going to become a morning person. Like okay, sure. You do that.

And then Andy... did it.

Just like that. Ashley still wasn't sure  _how_ , but sure enough, Andy was up every morning, playing music, doing yoga ( _yoga._ ) and cooking breakfast. Not that Ashley was complaining about the breakfast part, but it was a hell of a schedule adjustment to get woken up so long before noon when he didn't have any classes, and it was more or less impossible to sleep through it since he and Andy shared the bigger room of their two-bedroom apartment. He kind of expected Andy to run out of steam after a while, but they were about two weeks into the semester, and there were no signs of stopping.

Ashley had wondered a few times how their third roommate, Bill, felt about it, but Bill barely spoke English and tended to get a sort of deer-in-headlights expression whenever Andy started talking to him rapid-fire, so it was hard to gauge his feelings a lot of the time. He was definitely more in Ashley's camp schedule-wise, going by the way he mostly sat around drinking coffee and looking like a zombie for a couple of hours before he could go anywhere.

This morning, like clockwork, Andy was out in the cramped living room, Nightwish singing out from his phone and some YouTube yoga instruction video playing on his laptop. It wasn't the morning workout combination Ashley would have chosen, but that was in large part because he didn't work out in the mornings.

While Andy did his morning routine, Ashley did likewise: dragging himself out of bed, finding some clean-ish basketball shorts to pull on over his boxers (Bill also got a little bit deer-in-headlights whenever Ashley got too comfortable going around half-naked, and Ashley hadn't yet decided if it was because Bill didn't like it or if he liked it too much and didn't know what to do with himself), and shambling out to the kitchen to make coffee in a half-trance.

After he got the coffee machine going, Ashley leaned on the countertop and let his heavy eyelids slide half-shut again, absently tapping his fingers along with Andy's music. A nearby door creaking open and shuffling footsteps coming up to his side signaled that Bill had given in and gotten up too. Ashley acknowledged him with a sleepy grunt as Bill leaned on the counter next to him.

"Can you ask Andy to maybe change his morning music to something a little less... ominous?" Bill asked.

Ashley rubbed a hand over his face, already mumbling something in reply, before his brain caught up with reality. He straightened up, eyes snapping open. "You speak English!" He said, scandalized.

"Of course I speak English," Bill said, still leaning on the counter with his chin propped on his hand. He barely had any trace of an accent, to boot. "It's mandatory to learn in most German schools."

Ashley stared at him. "You- we've known you for a month, and this whole time you've been acting like you didn't know any English. Andy told me after you two first met that you only spoke German."

Bill blinked at him slowly, like a tired and somewhat judgmental cat. "I couldn't get a word in edgewise when we first met, so I think he just assumed."

And, well. Yeah, that checked out. The coffee machine beeped, and Ashley turned his attention to it instead of replying right away, though he was still huffy. He filled a mug for Bill and handed it over -- Bill took his coffee black, while Ashley preferred to fill his to the brim with milk and sugar. "Okay, but, you could have said something later on? You've been just pretending to not understand us half the time?"

"Well," Bill said, pausing to take a sip, "watching you two do charades whenever you needed something was very funny."

Ashley just looked at him for a moment before turning away with an exaggerated noise of disgust. Bill snorted into his mug.

"Okay, but when are you going to let Andy know?"

"Dunno. He's kind of..." Bill trailed off, and they both glanced into the living room where Andy was still at it.

They had looked out just in time for Andy to bend over double. Ashley both cursed and blessed himself for not talking Andy out of buying yoga pants. Glancing over, he saw that Bill's eyes had gotten a little wide.

"Yeah," Ashley agreed. Andy was definitely kind of something. A lot of things.

"But you have to tell him eventually."

Bill shrugged. "When it stops being funny."

And Ashley was in on the joke now, so he supposed that could be good enough for a while.


End file.
